Alien: Romulus teaser sends the series back to space and to familiar iconography
We hope you like Facehuggers because the teaser of Alien: Romulus has lots of them
TV News Alien
Though we’ve had plenty of Alien sequels, prequels, and spin-offs in the last two decades, the series hasn’t spent much time on a spaceship since 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. Alien: Romulus plans to change that.
Directed by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus resulted from numerous attempts at restarting the Alien franchise. So it should come as no surprise that it has the faint whiff of legacyquel. Álvarez is clearly working from a “please make this a straight-forward Alien movie instead of whatever Ridley Scott was doing for the last decade” directive. Gone are the pasty giants, Michael Fassbender, and Lawrence Of Arabia clips. What’s back? The corridors, the rattling ghostly soundtrack, and a low-angle shot of a mulleted woman holding a pulse rifle.
The irony of Álvarez as a director is that he loves working with constraints but punctuates his restraints with unbridled exploitation and bombast; the turkey baster scene from the climax of his “silent” horror thriller Don’t Breathe comes to mind. Here, he leans into an idea long theorized by Alien fans: What if there were a lot of Facehuggers? So, while the teaser is loaded with quiet shots of a ghostly spaceship, those spindly little guys explode out of nowhere, leaving only a split-second shot of the two-mouthed Xenomorph to cap the trailer.
Here’s the synopsis, which makes it sound like a group of college-age zoomers went on a road trip gone wrong:
“In this ninth entry in the immensely popular and enduring film series, a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
Alien: Romulus is one of two projects to escape development hell, where the series has been imprisoned since the middling response to Scott’s Alien: Covenant, a good movie. After Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the Mouse House ditched the idea that we’d continue plunging deeper into the Prometheus mythos, killed whatever lingering interest there was in a Neill Blomkamp Alien movie, and launched Romulus and a TV series created by Noah Hawley, simply called Alien.
As for the Romulus part? Well, we’re just going to assume that’s the ship’s name. We’re also comfortable predicting David Jonsson’s standing man character is the android.
Alien: Romulus hits theaters on April 16, 2024.
55 Comments
Definitely more interested in the show, but from what little they showed this doesn’t look bad. I really hope the franchise has ditched the notion that a robot made my humans created the Aliens like, 40 years before the original.
The concept of this life form appearing from who knows where in the reaches of space was always more frightening, and made a whole lot more sense. The universe is a big place.
The universe is a big place… and it wants to kill you.
With kindness, I hope!
Looks like a safe “greatest hits” version of the two Alien movies everybody likes. I just wish more people appreciated Prometheus/Covenant for at least attempting something different.
Has a lot of the Alien Isolation too.
“I’ll do the fingering.” – David, Alien Covenant
yeah…that shot near the end of the door opening with the backlight and wind was just pulled right out of Aliens. really turned me off for how much it felt like it meant like i was supposed to be pumping my fist.
at this point i will 100% take a greatest hits Alien(s) remix. i realize the irony in having made the opposite complaint about Star Wars, but at this point we could really just use a solid horror thriller with xenomorphs.
Many of us appreciate those films. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Yep watching the trailer I just kept saying to myself “so they just remade Alien with worse lighting” then saw the pulse rifle and realized they threw Aliens in there too.
I appreciate the attempt, but not the result.
I appreciate Prometheus a lot more than Covenant.
Mainly because of how Covenant handled Shaw and the swap to Fassbender being the real lead of the film to the point of him playing two characters while the ‘survivors’ were unlikable fodder. I mean, even the ending was just a ‘neat’ from me because the people with the most character where both played by the same actor.
my biggest problem with convenant is that they didn’t put danny mcbride in a mech suit.
Just because you attempt something doesn’t mean you succeed.
I wish people appreciated Alien: Resurrection more for going to some weird places. Honestly, even though I have a lot of issues with Prometheus I will say that it, like many other Alien movies, is watchable and fun enough to give a go to. I kinda feel the same way with the Predator movies, all are watchable and fun even if some are also kinda terrible. Now the AvP movies, we don’t talk about those
I was always amazed that they gave that film to Jean-Pierre Jeunet. At that point he had only done Delicatessen and City of Lost Children – both brilliant (and co-directed with Marc Caro). Not sure who thought – yeah, let’s give him money to do an Alien movie! It definitely had a look and colour pallete (and saturation) that was unique in the series and I did appreciate seeing some of his “regulars” in the film though. Give me a weird but interesting “kind of failure” over a boring rehash any day.
Give me Ron Perlman in anything and I’ll watch it.
Why would you be surprised? They had done the exact same thing in the previous installment, only Fincher had zero films under his belt.
Yes, but both of Jeunet’s films were weirdo art-house films IN FRENCH
I didn’t really dislike either Prometheus or Covenant (the people I saw those films with were much more negative about them)… and have re-watched both of them. I just wish that they didn’t require the characters to be so bloody stupid. If your plot can’t continue without characters doing really stupid things that people with that particular training would never, ever, not in a million years, actually do, then you need to rethink your writing/plotting. I liked what he was going for, but not how he tried to get there.
“I just wish that they didn’t require the characters to be so bloody stupid”
I laughed so hard when the Captain (I think it was the Captain it’s been ages since I saw it) in Covenant followed obviously evil David in to the murder basement and followed that up by leaning over a face hugger egg in said basement so his face was right over it.
Ya that was my biggest problem with it. I kept saying there’s no way they would make that choice. It’s almost like cabin in the woods where they pump the gas in that makes them more horny and stupid
I justified it in my head by theorizing that only idiots and fuckups are dumb or desperate enough to sign up for colonization ships. They aren’t sending, you know, their best.
I mean, “scientists displaying completely unscientific behavior” is admittedly something different.
Are there any franchise films which haven’t completely become shallow husks of what their earlier entries were? Mission Impossible is the only one that comes to mind.
I may be in the minority but I hope this doesn’t lean too heavily into the gore. I’m sure it will, because of the director, and this trailer, and the buzz around some sort of scene that’s apparently more gruesome than ever before or something.But to me, the more the franchise leans into gore the less it interests me. The first two movies had some pretty intense scenes of gore, but they stand out BECAUSE they’re so few and far between. Much of what the alien actually does is left to your imagination which, to me, makes it more frightening.Later movies really lean hard into the gore, like Resurrection and Covenant, in a way that takes away the mystery and suspense and tension and replaces it with blood and guts.
Any filmmaker that puts a shot of a tentacle that big going into someones mouth is going to show you some very gruesome shit that you will not be able to delete from your brain.
After what this director showed in evil dead, that scene really is telling of what might be coming. I’m not sure it’s the best approach, but it made me feel terrified of the facehugger. The last time I felt that way was in Aliens.The xenomorph is the the main horror, but actually the facehugger is pretty gross and dangerous, and apart from Alien, it is nothing more than a mechanism of the story telling that pressages the main monster. It would be interesting to do more with it. As for the trailer, I liked it a lot apart from that explosion and the apparent slow down effect when the facehugger shows up. It felt out of place.
My son when I showed him this trailer: “Cool! (reads credits)…oh, the tongue guy?”
The “abortion” scene in Prometheus was gory and frightening in all the best ways. It felt organic to what Noomi Rapace’s character would have to do in that situation and was just generally suspenseful. Just a good movie all around.
I have my issues with that movie but that scene is a classic. Prometheus definitely didn’t try to lean into gore for the sake of it, especially compared with Covenant.
a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.I will accept so long as it is either The Stoner or The Popular Girl who lives through to the end instead of the stereotypical Final Girl.
When will they follow horror movie protocol and put Xenomorphs in New York City?
Fuckin’ hell, Jason Voorhees has already been on a spaceship, so it’s only a matter of time
Jason X is only beginning to be seen as the masterpiece it was.
I think they should pull a reverse Lebrachuan and do the next two in the hood, then space, then Las Vegas
You mean hosting The Late Show? Or brunching with their gal pals in the Upper East side?
DO! NOT! BANG! XENOMORPHS!
Too late. Rule 34
You bang a Predator. You make love to a Xenomorph.
“Álvarez is clearly working from a ‘please make this a straight-forward Alien movie instead of whatever Ridley Scott was doing for the last decade’ directive.”
Sold.
The problem that any Alien (and Predator) movie has going for it is the audience knows everything about the alien and the characters don’t so there is no tension in the first 45 minutes when the characters are figuring out that facehuggers lead to eggs, eggs lead to chest explosion, which leads to alien, spit is acid etc etc.
That’s why no one rewatches Alien (or any other movie), I guess. Knowing what will happen removes all tension.
More than the familiarity (which I can deal with), I wish this weren’t directed by Alvarez, who really likes a kind of grotesque gore that I find harder and harder to endure in films. No one seems capable of going for the kind of almost-but-not-quite-shown horror of the original. I miss that.
I really wish they let Blomkamp try his legacy sequel to Aliens with Weaver and Biehn. This doesn’t look bad but aas someone below said it looks like a “greatest hits” compilation of the first two movies
With ya, but don’t want to spend the time answering “I thought you said Michael Biehn was in this” with progressively more withered “That…WAS Michael Biehn.”
“Scott’s Alien: Covenant, a good movie”Say what now?
Here, he leans into an idea long theorized by Alien fans: What if there were a lot of Facehuggers?
Has that been theorized?
There was one guy one time in 1994 on chatroom
alien.facehugger.hot.ripley.panties.orgy.fanfic
So maybe that
Oh yeah, I remember user Nailin-Yutitties!
Looks boring and unoriginal and doesn’t move the story along at all. Shame the alien and Predator franchise has so much potential. This and from the sound of it the tv series is just rinse and repeat don’t add anything new.
A teaser trailer didn’t move the story along at all? Was that its job? Or maybe we wait and see if the other 119 minutes or so check that box first?
It’s gonna have a similar problem that the Prometheus had, CGI effects are just not scary.
Thank GOD it looks like I won’t have to use my brain during this one… not like what Ridley’s been doing for the last decade with his complex stories and exciting new directions with the universe HE CREATED.